No danger in national debt reduction occurring

When life is fair, I will collect gobs of money by placing large bets in some unsuspecting casino in Las Vegas on two sure-fire things not to happen after the coming elections.

The first can’t lose bet will be that regardless of how many Democrats and Republicans are elected to the United States Congress and who the next president is, nothing substantial will be done by this group to reduce the almost incalculable nation debt. It is just not in the interests of the SuperPACs controlling these people.

Certainly, some kick the can down the road deal will be made to avoid the stain on their record of being part of the Beaufort County crippling cost cutting to become mandatory if sequestration becomes reality, although Congress never seems to be concerned with reality, which is an issue for common folks. Sequestration will automatically cause possibly $100 billion a year across the board budget cuts. No well-run company ever institutes across the board cuts, but selects targeted areas to reduce expenses, although no one should ever use the words well run around the United States Congress.

However, real progress toward a sane fiscal policy seems to be a concept beyond Congress’s comprehension. A side bet could be that they will actually allow an increase in the national debt thus allowing the country to venture closer to some form of national bankruptcy.

My second closer to home moneymaking bet will be the new South Carolina Legislature will do nothing to improve the imbalance between primary and secondary homeowner’s property tax burdens.

After foolishly passing Act 388 years ago, which replaced a stable form of revenue and is fraught with the dreaded result of “unintended consequences,” allowing primary homeowners to no longer pay a share of school operating taxes, and replacing it with the wildly fluctuating one percent sales tax, they have effectively eliminated South Carolina as a place for investors to buy second homes. Putting aside the idea of fiscal stability with the thought that second homeowners are not normally potential voters. Second homeowners rushed to their local tax offices to change their status to primary thus reducing even more, the revenue collected by each school district.

It is time to take our own Sen. Tom Davis’s suggestion to sunset all sales tax exemptions, and review each one to see if it actually makes sense to renew it. We currently exempt more potential tax revenue than we collect, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The new money collected could then go towards some form of tax reduction to the second homeowners thus hopefully reviving that particular market and surprise, surprise, increasing revenues to the struggling local school districts.

Common sense, maybe, but want to bet common sense loses out to political fat cats. I do.